At a certain point, the human body can no longer differentiate between very hot and extremely hot. I discovered this firsthand while loading a decade’s worth of furniture, dog accessories, and magazines into a U-Pack shipping container in 116-degree heat. It was June 2021 in Portland, Oregon—a usually temperate city, with an average high at that time of year of around 74 degrees. If it was hot outside, it was borderline lethal inside that metal container, and possessions of mine that were made of plastic began to melt where they touched the walls. If nothing else, the once-in-a-millennium heat dome felt like a cosmic shove out the door, and hellish confirmation that my family’s move to the East Coast was probably the right thing.

Our decision to relocate to ten sleepy acres in central Vermont was made a year earlier, in the middle of one of Oregon’s worst wildfire seasons. In September 2020, thanks to a confluence of blazes in the northwestern part of the state,��Portland’s Air Quality Index topped 500, the worst on the planet. When I walked out my front door, I couldn’t see past my neighbors’ houses in any direction. In our creaky, drafty old Craftsman, breathing was labored. Exercise was impossible. Temperatures hovered in the mid-fifties during the day, with a thick layer of smoke blotting out the sun, Cretaceous extinction–style.

If you don’t live in the West, this probably sounds like amped-up climate paranoia. Unfortunately, it’s no exaggeration. I moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2010 for its wild beauty, accessible trails, and bold, scalable mountains. (And yes, for its coffee and food trucks, too.) But outdoor recreation became increasingly difficult during the summer, which historically was a brief and beautiful respite from the region’s famous sogginess. Instead, wildfire-fueled smog now regularly makes hiking—or doing anything outside—sooty and unpleasant. Critically, buying or building a home adjacent to many of Oregon and Washington’s wild areas has become a liability. Dreaming of an off-the-beaten-path cabin near Mount Hood? Think again. In 2020, wildfires razed four cities in a uniquely viridescent part of the Willamette Valley.

And the claim that this heat was a rare anomaly may need updating. According to in November 2021, a heat dome like the one that baked the Pacific Northwest is likely to occur every five to ten years if we reach the warming threshold of two degrees Celsius roundly considered the planet’s cataclysmic tipping point.

Vermont doesn’t have the same kind of natural beauty found in the Pacific Northwest, but it’s plenty gorgeous all the same, from its bright fall foliage to the deep blanket of snow that often persists from December into March. The mountains in New England may be a good 7,000 feet shorter, and the skiing a bit icy, but we can strap on a light alpine-touring setup and head far enough out on the Catamount Trail to feel like we’re the only ones around for hundreds of miles.

It was the chance to build a home on secluded, forested land that wasn’t under imminent threat from wildfires that sold us. We can hike out our back door in all seasons without wearing a mask to protect us from smoke—something we’ll never take for granted again.

New England isn’t immune to climate change: the region is warming even faster than much of the country, with heavier rainfall, hotter summers, and growing tick populations. We will inevitably have West (and East) Coast wildfire smoke wafting across our lawn in certain years. Our plan isn’t to ride out the apocalypse with our heads in the sand, but can you blame us for at least enjoying our maple syrup and flannel with the windows open?

The post Why I Gave Up the Pacific Northwest to Move Back East appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

My older brother wanted to stop our four-day, 28-mile hiking trip after a mile and a half. He said his feet hurt.

“You’ll feel better when we get to the lake,” I said. “It’s just an easy mile or so.”��

It was two miles, all uphill.��

“I won’t feel better,” Don said. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel better.”

We stood in a shadowy clearing, surrounded by moss-covered subalpine fir trees and the twittering, rustling, and sighing forest sounds that I had hoped might provide the soundtrack to a fraternal late-midlife adventure. Don stared at the ground. I shoveled a handful of trail mix into my mouth. My feet hurt, too. I worried that this trip might have been a huge mistake.��

Don was 64, recently divorced after 24 years, recently retired from a long career as a law partner and CEO. His only child had graduated college two years earlier and moved 2,500 miles away, and Don was spending a lot of time in his four-bedroom house in Portland, Oregon, alone, lonely, plagued by shoulder pain and acid reflux, and deeply committed to what he was certain was a reasonable survival strategy, namely, “I just need to get used to the idea that I’m closer to death and the world is meaningless and there’s a good chance I’ll never find anything worthwhile to do.”��

Slightly alarmed, eager to help, and always up for a trip��in the outdoors, I had broached the idea of a hiking vacation together. I was 62, single, childless, technically unemployed (I’m a writer), renting a studio apartment in New York City, and suffering from recurrent gout. While generally resistant to the idea that a toasted marshmallow could change anything profound in anyone’s life, I was still desperate to believe that it might.��

I told Don on the phone that the hike��would cement our brotherly bonds and reconnect us to the wilderness where we had spent significant chunks of our young adulthoods. I told him we might find��something like peace in alpine meadows and under starry skies. I told him the trip could be life changing, that it would provide us both a much needed reset.��

“No thanks,” he said. Don had never been one for big speeches.

“Why not?”��

“What’s the point?”

“Fun? Exercise? Living in the moment?��Leaving our comfort zones?��Getting some clarity and perspective? Rediscovering purpose and connection?” I’m a talker.

“Spare me the inner-life mumbo jumbo,” he said. “You have the luxury of dabbling in that stuff, since you haven’t had a real job in decades.”

I reminded myself that Don was in a dark place, that he needed my support.��

“You love hiking,” I told him. “You always loved hiking.”

“I can’t hike. My Achilles tendon won’t allow it. I’ll never be able to hike again.”

“Don, you can hike. Take an Advil. You hike every day��when you walk to the coffee shop.”

“That’s not hiking, that’s walking.”

“So when we’re on the trail, pretend like you’re going to the coffee shop.”

“At least at the coffee shop��someone makes me coffee.”

Three months later, I flew west, and we drove four hours south and east until we arrived at the Middle Rosary Lake Trailhead,��smack in the middle of ��on the eastern side of the��Cascades. It was August 9, 2 P.M. At 3 P.M., we had covered a mile and a half. That’s when Don announced that his feet hurt.

We shared a bedroom until we were six and eight years old. Don collected rocks. I hoarded seashells. Angelo the barber gave Don a crew cut on the third Saturday of every month. I sported a Princeton. Don worked hard. I tested well. Don was tall, with slim hips and broad shoulders, and he won every 60-yard dash and pull-up competition in grade school. I had to wear husky pants. Don spent his allowance on comic books featuring��Superman and Batman, champions of justice who, like Don, kept their own counsel. I was more partial to the Silver Surfer, the conflicted and somewhat blabbermouthed defender of earth, who said things like, “My fate is of little consequence … if it can save the world that gave me birth!” When frustrated��or stymied, Don stewed, plotted, and then acted (often, it seemed, against me). I tended to cry, frequently��and loudly.��

When I was 11 and my mother, for the third year in a row, couldn’t locate the present I had bought for her birthday (a gift inspired after one night I bore witness on television to the gadget’s incredible slicing and dicing powers), Don pulled me aside after a trip to Angelo’s, and he laid an already muscled forearm across my naked, flabby, soft, and, as I remember, slightly quivering neck. “Steve,” he said, “do you really think mom is losing all those Veg-O-Matics?”��

“Wow,” I exclaimed. “Amazing!”��

Don grunted.��

We stood upon the edge of a gleaming green jewel of a lake (named, coincidentally enough, Green Lake). It was��day two, and we had climbed about 1,000 feet and covered four miles, moving alongside Fall Creek, past waterfalls, into and out of dense forests of red pine carpeted with clover. The fact that Don had not spoken for the past hour wasn’t unusual, but combined with the “closer to death and the world is meaningless” stuff, it unsettled me some. I had mentioned��to Don��more than once��that perhaps his perspective was clouded, by retirement, by divorce, and that maybe with time he would see things more clearly. Maybe, he allowed, but probably not. He doubted he would ever find love. He suspected that lucrative, fulfilling work was out of reach forever. And really, weren’t those who had found love and satisfying work doomed to lose both?��

“How about a quick dip?” I said.��When I worried about Don, which I often did, I suggested things he might do to feel better. Over the past few decades, I had suggested that he see a therapist, consider��the latest emotional-retreat weekend workshop I had recently attended, and/or think about joining��a Kundalini yoga practice that took place in a salt cave. I had heard good things about salt caves.��

“You go ahead,” he said. “I’m going to take a pass on the hypothermia.” When Don worried about me, which was often, he suggested I get married and settle down��or at least stick with a regular girlfriend��or, if I couldn’t manage it, that I maintain a semi-regular writing schedule��or, if that was too much, that I at least make an attempt to get out of bed before 10 A.M. more often.��

Also, that I might “reroute some of the money you’re spending on your inner child into a SEP-IRA.”��

We stood at the lake’s edge. The water lapped.��

“You should take off your boots and soak your feet,” I said. “It will cheer you up��and make our return hike go faster.” I stripped, dove in.��

Don slowly crouched, stuck the ring and middle fingers of his left hand into the water, used his right hand to shade his eyes as he studied the horizon, still bright and blue.��

He stared at something only he could see. “The return hike is going to be the return hike,” he said. “Four miles, at least two hours. Unless someone falls. Harder on the knees, going downhill. Lots of dirt. And tomorrow’s hike is going to be longer��and steeper. But enjoy the swim. I think I’ll conserve my energy.”

Don showed me that by holding my pillow next to the air conditioner on summer nights, then running back to bed with it, I could keep my head cool.��He taught me that when Wolf, the neighborhood German shepherd, jumped on me, I should knee him in the chest and frown. Over the years, he has coached me before work interviews, reviewed contracts, counseled me through professional disappointments and breakups, fixed me up on dates, and made sure I wasn’t alone on holidays. When our younger sister, at the time living by herself and raising a three-year-old and an infant, told me that she was having trouble getting out of bed and was crying for hours every day, I told Ann that she should let go of her anxiety and embrace gratitude and joy. I told Don about our conversation, and the next morning he flew to Colorado, packed her bags and those of her two children, flew them all back to Oregon with him, and then, with his wife at the time,��cooked for Ann and the kids, babysat, and generally nursed her back to health.��

He favors button-down shirts and lace-up shoes and travels with his own pillows, plural, because “better to carry a little extra��than to be surprised.” He listens to albums on his turntable, reads the print version of The New York Times, watches network news, naps every day at precisely 4 P.M., and has erected some sturdy and clearly defined personal boundaries, especially when it comes to our mother. For his 60th birthday, he hosted a small gathering, to which he invited Mom. When she asked if there would be cake, he replied in the affirmative. When she asked what flavor it would be, he asked why she needed to know.��

I like��hoodies and��Hawaiian shirts, have occasionally lied about my age on dating sites, and have, in the past ten years, inspired by infomercials, purchased fake thumbs that lit up when activated with secret buttons, a Bowflex Xtreme 2, and something called the Owl Optical Wallet Light, which contained a magnifying glass and a reading light. Actually, I bought two of those. I answer any and all questions from my mother, then deal with my resentment and guilt by eating Entenmann’s Devil’s Food Crumb Donuts and Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream until I am sick.

For years, Don had been telling family members that they needn’t give him gifts on holidays or for his birthday, but if they felt compelled, they should only shop from a list he distributed, and that first we should check with each other to avoid duplication. I decided that his energetic efforts to control the world masked a terrible interior sense of chaos, and that a surprise might psychically jolt him into a more relaxed, happier state. So��one winter break, I carried home from college and presented to Don a 13-pound��authentic “country-cured Boone County Ham,” along with printed instructions for scraping off the ham’s mold with a stiff brush, washing it, then soaking it in cold water for 12 to 24 hours before roasting. He read the instructions, then stared at me. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said.��

Day three, and I have accepted the impossibility of either of us finding peace by eating toasted marshmallows. There have been and will be no toasted marshmallows, because after discovering that the only campsite available on our first night sat next to a dumpster, we��decided that, for the remainder of the trip, we could bond just fine without sleeping on the ground or having to urinate outside. So we’ve been sleeping in lodges and cabins the past two nights.��

We have been watching downloaded movies, treating ourselves to pancakes and scrambled eggs in the morning, and spending most of our daylight hours hiking. Today, climbing through a dense hemlock forest, we have been discussing knee pain, shoulder pain, love, divorce, cortisone, our parents, physical therapy, Don’s child, our sister’s children, our childhoods, yoga, and real estate. I have been doing most of the discussing.��

Just as I was weighing the relative risks and benefits of therapy under the influence of psilocybin, we popped out of the forest and onto a rocky, almost lunar plain. Jutting up along the horizon were the granite, snow-veined South Sister and Broken Top Mountains. Between them and us,��though we couldn’t see it,��lay , which��a website I’d checked called��one of the most beautiful mountain lakes in the area.

“It sounds incredible,” I said.

Don consulted his map, cross-checked with his compass. “It always sounds incredible on a website,” he said.

He has never shied from straight talk or hard truths. The supermodel girlfriend a young cousin once��brought to a family wedding? “Super skinny is more like it,” Don said. The newest four-star Manhattan restaurant where we celebrated a birthday together? “Noisy. And overpriced.” The three-story, five-bedroom Florida house we snagged one Thanksgiving? “Have you been monitoring red-tide levels?”��

When we made it to the lake, I immediately began disrobing. Don consulted his watch, the map, the sky, his watch again, the compass, then the lake. I walked in, up to my knees.

“C’mon!” I said. “It’s great.”

He studied the sky again.��

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”��

Ten years earlier, when Don was a CEO, the chairman of the board’s secretary told Don on a Monday that he needed to be in the chairman’s office that Friday��at 4 P.M.��for a private one-on-one meeting. Don told me it could only mean one thing: he was going to be fired. I told Don he had been sure he was going to be fired many times before, that he would be happier if he spent less time worrying and more time focusing on the present. Instead, Don spent the next week imagining all the missteps he might have committed in his tenure and jotted down explanations for each. He also worked on an elaborate, technical, and airtight legal document that, if necessary, he would present to the chairman, demanding a two-year severance package,��with stock options. Just in case.��

When Friday arrived, the chairman said he wanted to discuss the company’s annual holiday celebration. That was it.��

I pondered all the time my brother has spent planning for catastrophes that don’t happen.��

“Did you learn anything from that experience?” I had asked Don.

“Yeah,” he��said. “It pays to be prepared.”

Stories about mental illness and growing old can be amusing, even hilarious, especially before you or someone you know endures either. So this might be a good place to mention that, about two years before our hike, doctors had diagnosed and begun treating Don for depression. Until then, for the most part, I had viewed his occasional grouchiness, frequent pessimism, general dismissiveness (especially toward me), and ever vigilant posture toward the world as merely elements of his personality.

Then again, until I had been diagnosed and treated for depression myself, a few years before Don, I had considered my romantic difficulties, binge eating, binge sleeping, binge crying, and binge Veg-O-Matic and Owl Wallet Light purchasing as elements of my nature. But couldn’t we change? Our hike in the woods coincided with a point in our lives when we were trying to ascertain exactly which of our not entirely welcome behavioral patterns might be malleable and subject to our best intentions and which ones we were simply doomed to endure. In other words, our hike happened right around the time��we were getting ready for Medicare.��

Pudgy gray clouds scud across a sky so blue it looks painted. Pine trees above us quiver in the soft breeze, while the deep, clear Metolius River flows below. Today, our last hike, is a gentle five-miler, flat, mostly shaded.��

It’s a narrow trail, and Don walks ahead. The wind picks up.��

“Hey, Don,” I say, “thanks for teaching me how to handle Wolf the dog and showing me the cooling-the-pillow trick.”

“Uh-huh,” he says.

Across the river, clear water gushes from a spring, turning the meandering stream to churning��whitewater. We enter a winding canyon, bordered by old-growth ponderosa pine. Broods of goslings paddle next to us. Bunches of bright yellow tanagers hop in the shrubs lining the banks.

“And I appreciate your breaking the news about the Veg-O-Matics to me,” I say, “even if it hurt my feelings at the time.”��

Don grunts.��

We have two miles left in our trip. I wonder if they’ll be done in silence.

“I should have kept the Hanukkah ham,” Don says.

“H�ܳ�?”

“I just couldn’t get past the mold. I can see now that it was a mistake. You wanted to surprise me, and you thought it would help me. I appreciate that now.”

I feel something dislodge in my chest. I don’t know what to say. So I say what I have been saying for the past 55 years or so.��

“My fate is of little consequence … if it can save the world that gave me birth!”

I can hear Don sigh, even over the wind.��

“Right, Steve” he says. “Of course.”

We’ll survive the hike to the trailhead, the drive back to Portland, the unpacking. We’ll survive family vacations. We’ll survive family drama. (Don will tell me that if I write about our trip, “Please quote me as saying the story will be incomplete��and mostly true.”) We’ll survive the next two years, a time when Don will meet a woman, and they will move in together, raise chickens, and plant a garlic patch. He will visit his son in Brooklyn many times, and in Portland he’ll join a lawyers’ support group, and when another man in the group says that he has been experiencing crippling despair and paralyzing anxiety��and has decided that in order to improve, he needed to imagine the future he hoped for and pray to a power greater than himself, Don will ask, without meaning to be funny or mean, “Just in case, do you have a plan B?”

He will add a hot bath to precede��his daily nap, and accept positions on the boards of three Portland nonprofits: one that helps adults suffering from mental illness, another serving homeless youth, and a third dedicated to preserving the Columbia Gorge. As a volunteer, he’ll take the adults on hikes and the teenagers to a boxing gym owned by a man he has helped with legal issues over the years. He will find meaning��and purpose��but will continue to worry. I will continue to assure him that everything will be OK, to which he will invariably reply, “Sure, unless it won’t.”

I will cut back on the Chubby Hubby and the Devil’s Food Crumb Donuts. I will save enough money to rent a cabin in the woods for a month in the summer, where I will host my mother, sister, and nephew for two weeks. I will divest myself of all but three Hawaiian shirts, as well as toss��the Bowflex Xtreme2 and both Owl Optical Wallet Lights. I will take the seven sets of Lightup Magic Thumbs from their special box on my bookshelf only on special occasions.��

Except for a set of Perfect Pushup Rotating Handles, which are, after all, health related, I will cease infomercial-inspired shopping.��

But all that occurs later. At the moment, there is only the two of us, and the trail, and the wind, and the scudding clouds, and bright blue sky. Brothers. I stop, tilt my face to the warming sun.��

“A perfect end to a perfect trip,” I say.��

Don stops, too, lifts his face to the exact same sun. The river, deep and cold, surges past. He shades his eyes, He studies the sky.��

“True,” he says. “Even if it rains.”

The post A Love Letter to My Curmudgeonly Big Brother appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

A few years ago, Ben Leoni and Lindsay Bourgoine moved from Portland, Maine, to Boulder, Colorado. They��relocated for work��and also a lifestyle change. Both skiers, they wanted to be closer to the mountains and spend their time off doing what they love. Leoni recently started a new job as an attorney at the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Bourgoine works as the director of policy and advocacy for .

As a government employee, Leoni has��12 days of paid time off each year, and he works longer hours so he can get every other Friday off. Protect Our Winters, where Bourgoine works, has a policy that encourages staffers to get outside to relieve stress. Dubbed Nature Days,��employees can take one day per month to play outdoors and refuel, in addition to their allotted vacation time. The couple plans to use every single one of those available days off.

They don’t have to go far to get away. “We take microadventures,” says Leoni. “Even if they’re just two or three days, getting away can feel like hitting the reset button. Being outside and putting distance between myself and work is really helpful. I feel more productive when I’m at work after I’ve been away. I’m just generally happier.”

There’s a growing body of research that reaffirms what Leoni and Bourgoine already know: taking time off is good for you, and it’s good for your work.��A conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of California at��Los Angeles��found that, when asked, most Americans said they would prefer more money as opposed to more time off. But those who answered the latter��showed higher levels of happiness.��A�� published in Canada the same year reported that those who took more vacation days experienced better overall health and life satisfaction, while a�� in Helsinki��interviewed employees over several decades and found that those who took shorter vacations reported worse general health and had a higher mortality rate.

Despite all the data, Americans are still not inclined to take days off. According to the most recent report from the U.S. Travel Association, 55 percent of American employees had unused vacation days in 2018, which equated to 768 million unused paid-time-off days on the table, up 9 percent from the previous year. Of those unused days, 236 million were forfeited completely and didn’t roll over to 2019.

Why are we not using our days off? “There are a few reasons that Americans cite for not taking the vacation days they’re allotted,” says Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association. “After the cost and expense barriers, the top reason we hear is that Americans say it’s just too hard to get away from work. They say they are afraid they could be seen as not a dedicated worker if they take a vacation.”

Not everyone gets paid time off, of course. The Center for Economic and Policy Research�� that one in four U.S. workers receive��no paid leave. Of the 21 richest countries in the world, the U.S. is . In 2019, New York mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a bill that would require employers of a certain size to provide up to ten��days of paid vacation to their workers, which would��make the city��the first in the country to enact such a law. But it has��yet to pass.

But company culture in America is shifting, and progressive businesses are realizing that to avoid fatigue and retain happy, productive employees, vacation is necessary. Take��, a Boulder-based software startup. In addition to unlimited paid time off, Bonusly has an expectation that all employees will take a minimum of two weeks of vacation. If you don’t take enough, a manager will remind you to do so.

“It’s very in vogue to offer an unlimited vacation policy,” says Raphael Crawford-Marks, founder and CEO of Bonusly. “But that policy, intentionally or not, has led to an implicit pressure to not take vacation, because there is always important work to be done. So��I felt strongly about not just saying��we have an unlimited vacation policy but also that it’s part of your job to get enough rest and recreation that you can do this over the long term. We’re going to hold you accountable for taking that vacation.”

Bonusly has a very low turnover rate—less than a third of the average for startups at its stage, according to Crawford-Marks, who credits the vacation policy with reducing burnout.

SheerID, a digital-verification company with offices in Portland and Eugene, Oregon, shifted from offering employees 15 paid days off in 2018 to allowing unlimited days off and including a requirement that staffers take at least three weeks each year. (Both Bonusly and SheerID were named among�����ϳԹ���’s Best Places to Work in 2019.)

“We’re at a point where so many people spend so much time working, taking it home with them, and they’re always engaged and available. It’s so important that companies cultivate that culture of ‘take time away and come back when you’re ready,’” says Halsey Gilligan, director of human resources at SheerID. “Research shows that we’re more productive when we’ve had time to rest and relax or get outside or be creative.”

So why are people still not taking days off when they can?��There’s one more thing that the U.S. Travel Association’s Dow��cited as a reason. “Nearly half of Americans fail to plan for their vacation,” he says. Here’s an idea: start��planning your next trip or staycation now, get something on the books, so��you’ll have no excuse not to get away. It doesn’t have to be big—it can be staying home and pitching a tent in the backyard, or driving an hour away to that lake you’ve always wanted to swim in.��

The point isn’t that you need to take three weeks off at once and plan a mega adventure to some far-flung country (although, of course, that’s always fun, too). All that matters is that you step away, stop thinking about work for a sustained period of time, and remind yourself that a vacation can happen anywhere and anytime—as long as you let yourself have one.

The post Why You Should Take All Your Vacation Days appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Forget chocolate and roses. All you really need to celebrate��Valentine’s Day is quality time outside��and a cozy place to curl up at night. We found some��cabins��located in ideal places for exploring, making them perfect retreats��for adventurous couples.

For Skiers and Snowboarders

First off, there’s the location: you’re five minutes from the slopes of California’s�� and a few more from the legendary steeps of Squaw Valley. On weekends,��a free, on-demand shuttle called the����that’s operated by the ski resort��will pick you up at the cabin and deliver you to the hill. Then, of course, there’s the house itself: a��thoughtfully restored, dog-friendly A-frame with two bedrooms, a wood-burning stove, a full��kitchen, and a deck overlooking pine forests and snowcapped peaks (from $224).

For Digital Detoxers

Located two hours from Portland, Oregon, near the volcanic peak of Mount Adams, Washington, this collection of tiny cabins dot a campground��with no cell service. (Don’t fret: there’s a landline if you really need to make a call.) There’s�� in the surrounding area, from hiking in the Columbia River Gorge to exploring the Guler Ice Cave. Your cabin—which is less than 200 square feet—comes well stocked with a kitchen, a private bathroom, books, and a wireless speaker (from $99). Provisions like marshmallows, oatmeal, and hot chocolate are available for purchase.

For National Park Fans

This sleek one-bedroom cabin (from $393), just five minutes from , on the Big Island, was recently made available to rent. You can hike through rainforests into a volcanic crater and spot lava flow from previous eruptions. If you’re craving a beach day, you’re just 40 minutes by car��from the seaside town of Hilo (don’t miss the stunning 80-foot-high Rainbow Falls nearby). A hot tub, an outdoor fire pit, and a spacious king bed will keep you happy by night.

For Those Who Want to Get Away (But Not Too Far)

If the idea of being in a remote cabin alone in the woods doesn’t sound ideal to you, then consider a lodge��next to a full-service hotel, like ��in the Catskills, near the town of Windham, New York. It offers three Scandinavian-style A-frames��that are just 220 square feet and come with a queen bed, an attached bath, and access to a nearby wood-barrel sauna (from $299). You may not want to leave the property, thanks to a hip on-site bar and restaurant, but if you do, skiing at Windham Mountain is just a few minutes away.

For Ocean Lovers

Birdwatchers and sea kayakers love Dauphin Island, Alabama, a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico accessed via a short ferry ride from Mobile Point or a drive��over a three-mile-long bridge. Walk through the , sea-kayak from the marina, or pet stingrays at the . Stay at this remodeled A-frame, which has views of the Gulf Coast and is just steps away from white-sand beaches (from $72).

For Hardy, Do-It-Yourselfers

Available for bookings from December through March, this wintertime backcountry hut (from $88) is located on private land in Huntington, Vermont. It’s not fancy: most everything needs to be packed in. You’ll need your own sleeping bag, use a detached outhouse, build your own fire, and melt snow for water. Getting there is straightforward—it’s a 250-yard walk or ski from the road. And there’s a path��from the cabin that connects to the 300-mile-long��, beloved by Vermont’s nordic skiers.

For the Whole Family

These nine year-round cabins in Cañon City, Colorado, about two and a half hours south of��Denver, come in a variety of sizes, depending on your group. There are 600-square-foot, one-bedroom cabins for just the two of you, or, if you’re bringing the kids, you can opt for a��two-bedroom house (from $375). You’ll score views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains��from your front stoop. The town’s main attraction is the Royal Gorge, a 1,200-foot-deep canyon that runs for ten��miles and contains the Arkansas River, a paddler’s paradise come summertime. For a sweet view of the surrounding area, be sure to walk across the Royal Gorge Bridge, one of the world’s highest suspension bridges.

The post 7 Cabins That Are Perfect for a Romantic Getaway appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

Spring break is coming up soon, and it doesn’t have to be synonymous with expensive or crowded. You can get away from it all on a dime if you know where to go.��Plus, you’ll find plenty of good reasons to travel at this time of year, from blooming wildflowers��to��corn snow.

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California

The wildflowers in 620,000-acre��, two hours northeast of San Diego, are stunning come springtime. Take a hike along 18.9 miles��of the Pacific Crest Trail, which cuts through it, or the four-mile , and you’ll spot blooming yuccas, cacti, sunflowers, dandelions, and desert lilies. The flowering usually starts in late February or early March and lasts through May, but call the park’s wildflower hotline (760-767-4684) for the latest update. Stay at the 15-room�� (from $175), or use Hipcamp to find��a����at a nearby retreat center��(from $80).�� rents mountain bikes and offers��guided bike tours in the park.

Rossland, British Columbia

Hostels aren’t what they used to be.��Expect��the affordable, communal vibe��but in a much more��upscale package. Take, for example,��, a design-forward hostel that opened in late 2018 at the base of��, outside the town of Rossland. You can get private rooms or bunks starting at $30 a night, whip up a meal in a sleek shared kitchen, and tap into high-speed Wi-Fi in the lounge. Plus, spring skiing at Red��Mountain is always a good time. The resort closes for the season on April 5, but before then, you’ll find zero crowds and plenty of corn snow, as well as��pond skimming, concerts, and end-of-season parties.

Reed Bingham State Park, Georgia

Want to stay on your own private island for just $35 a night? At��, 20 minutes east of the town of Moultrie, Georgia, you can do just that. Rent a canoe from the park (from $60) and you can paddle a short distance to a primitive, remote campsite on Eagle Island, smack in the middle of the park’s 375-acre Lake Reed Bingham. From there, you can fish, swim, or explore the island. Or paddle back to shore to hike seven miles of trails. In spring, keep your eyes open for baby bald eagles hatching and leaving their nests.

Portland, Oregon

So you want to go camping for spring break, but you don’t want to fly with all your camping gear.�� in Portland recently partnered with gear-rental company�� on a�� that solves that problem. Stay a few nights in the hotel and then a few nights road-tripping and camping along the Oregon coast. The package starts at $210, which includes one night in the hotel and one night of camping. That also includes 20 percent off your room rate and gear rental. Your kit—sleeping bags and pads, tents, a propane stove, kitchen supplies, camp��chairs, a cooler, and more—can be arranged for pickup or delivered directly to the hotel. Xscape Pod’s campsite concierge can help you book a location,��or try central Oregon’s�� (from $21), a stunning campground on a sandy beach, perfect for whale-watching.

Playa Guiones, Costa Rica

Located on the Pacific coast’s Nicoya Peninsula, Playa Guiones is a four-mile-long, white-sand beach with a stellar surf break. Stay at the�� (from $179), a shorefront hotel that has an on-site surf school for lessons, rentals, and guided outings. Don’t miss the property’s weekly live music��and daily yoga classes.�� rents mountain bikes and leads tours of surrounding��trails, and just��north, you can watch nesting turtles this time of year at . Liberia International Airport is about two and a half hours away, and the hotel can arrange for an airport shuttle, but flights from the U.S. into (five hours away) tend to be considerably cheaper.

Washington, D.C.��

In the spring, the nation’s capital city turns pink with blooming cherry blossoms. The four-week-long�� takes place from March 20 through April 12 and includes free events like kite festivals on the grounds of the Washington Monument and street parades down Constitution Avenue. The�� (from $153),��minutes from the��, has a hip bar and lounge stocked with board games. Take a hike or run in 1,754-acre��, one of the country’s largest city parks, which has 32 miles of trails.

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Living in a big city doesn’t��mean you don’t have��access to the wild outdoors. The , an initiative within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, manages 567 national wildlife refuges, including��101 ��located within 25 miles of cities housing populations over 250,000—serving the 80 percent of Americans who live in and around metro areas.��We’re talking about massive plots of lands, immense networks of trails, and thriving biospheres��of animals and plants in 36 states, all within an hour of places��like Detroit or Birmingham, Alabama.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

John Heinz

11 miles from the Liberty Bell

,��located within Philadelphia’s city limits, was our country’s first urban refuge, established in 1972. Known for��its focus on education, it enlists community members to��convert unused lots into urban-pollinator gardens and hosts��local��students��for in-the-field environmental courses and summer internships. There’s incredible wildlife spotting along the 285-acre freshwater tidal marsh,��including bald eagles, beavers, and deer. (You can borrow binoculars from the visitor��center for free.)��Or opt to��paddle a canoe down the 4.5-mile tidal segment of Darby Creek��or hike 10 miles of trails that traverse the site.

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Valle de Oro��

7 miles from the Albuquerque airport

Wildlife and habitat restoration are��priorities at��, set along the eastern banks of the Rio Grande just a few miles from downtown Albuquerque. Park staff are��currently teaching��the��ABQ Backyard Refuge Program, where people��learn how to rebuild habitats and garden to reintroduce��wildlife in their own backyards. The 570-acre swath��was created in 2012 on a former dairy farm, making it one of the country’s newest��urban wildlife sanctuaries and the first in the Southwest. Come for a visit and you’ll score views of migratory birds, like snow geese and sandhill cranes, with��the Sandia Mountains��as a backdrop. There are also��guided walking tours on newly built trails��and stargazing sessions.

New Orleans, Louisiana

Bayou Sauvage��

46 miles from the French Quarter

If you want to spot American alligators close to New Orleans, head to the marshes of��—Joe Madere Marsh is one of the best places for viewing this endemic species. You can learn about the importance of marshes and wetlands in protecting New Orleans from storm surges, fish for largemouth bass or catfish in its��freshwater lagoons and bayous,��or launch a canoe and��paddle the canals and small lakes that dot the property. Short boardwalk trails are also popular with hikers��and nature photographers. More recently, students from the University of New Orleans have been learning to plant trees and marsh grasses to help rebuild wetlands here.

San Diego, California

San Diego Bay��

13 miles from the San Diego Zoo

stretches over 12,300 acres, offering easy access to wilderness for the millions of residents in this��metropolitan area. The park has��trails for hiking and mountain biking, restored grasslands and oak woodlands that were once damaged by wildfire, and endangered butterflies and waterfowl that stop��over during their winter migrations. The ��facilitates��educational programs here, and the��San Diego��nonprofit organization , which connects local kids to outdoor activities, leads excursions��at the refuge like fishing, biking, and kayaking.

Portland, Oregon��

Tualatin River

15 miles from Powell’s City of Books

Just outside Portland, within the floodplain of the Tualatin River, you’ll find a peaceful sanctuary in an otherwise busy urban area. The , southwest of��downtown, is a stopover for migrating waterfowl and songbirds on the Pacific Flyway and home to a number of mammals, including coyote, deer, and bobcat. Several miles of trails are open to hikers. In the fall,��admire the��changing foliage and migrating geese and swans. The park hosts well-loved events, like the annual Tualatin Bird Festival in the spring or youth-oriented programs��through , an organization that encourages wilderness education and community involvement for local schoolchildren.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minnesota Valley��

Less than 2 miles from the Mall of America

Smack in the middle of the Twin Cities, covers 14,000 lofty acres and 70 miles along the Minnesota River.��Paddle the waterway��in a canoe, or hike or run��46 miles of winding trails. The refuge hands out free loaner binoculars, fishing gear, and snowshoes at its��visitor��center,��and local kids can��borrow snow clothes and boots when they show up midwinter.��An on-site art gallery showcases nature-inspired work from hometown��and rotating artists.

Denver, Colorado

Rocky Mountain Arsenal��

14 miles from Mile High Stadium

Spot bison, deer, bald eagles, prairie dogs, songbirds, and endangered black-footed ferrets at the 15,000-acre, located between Denver International Airport and��downtown’s��skyscrapers, with views of the Rocky Mountains. Hike the ten��miles of trails or motor along Wildlife Drive, an 11-mile loop where you can see bison and deer. Fishing is big here: there’s bass in��Lake Mary or Lake Ladora, as well as and an for those with disabilities.

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You want a vacation that feels like a vacation—a pool, a comfy bed, good food, plenty of things to do (or not). But you also don’t want a holiday that puts the environment second fiddle to your comforts. Now more than ever, properties��in��dreamy locales are making environmental protections part of the experience, either through��design, like making the most of��alternative energy sources, green building protocols, energy-efficient heating and cooling, and waste-reduction practices, or by inviting you to participate in conservation efforts. Here are seven notable outposts doing just that.

Wilderness Safaris Jao Camp

Okavango Delta, Botswana

At��, which closed for a top-down renovation in 2018 and reopened this summer, you’ll stay in one of five villas built into the tree canopy, with your own private plunge pool, outdoor shower, butler, and chef. This entirely solar-powered safari camp was reconstructed with an intentionally low footprint to minimize impact on the Okavango Delta. Electricity and hot water are��powered by on-site solar panels,��rooms are chilled��with a silent evaporative cooler,��which consumes less energy than normal air-conditioning,��and single-use plastics have been replaced with reusable, organic amenities. When you’re not relaxing in your villa, paddle the delta in a traditional dugout canoe, search for��buffalo and elephants, or stargaze on an outdoor deck.��From $1,262 per person, all-inclusive

The Nines Hotel

Portland, Oregon

The silver LEED-certified��, located in a historic downtown Portland building that once housed a department store, gets creative��with its sustainability efforts. All 331 guest rooms have energy-saving thermostats, low-flush toilets, and LED lights. But this property��goes beyond��the typical requirements, with a��rooftop herb garden and rainwater collection system, an��on-site beehive that supplies all of the hotel’s��honey, and discounted rates on valet parking if you drop off a hybrid car. Close to 80 percent of its waste is diverted from landfills, thanks to a full-proof recycling system and biodegradable products. Take the MAX light-rail around town, run through Waterfront Park, or dine on vegan sushi and dim sum on the hotel’s rooftop terrace.��From $235

Clayoquot Wilderness Resort

Vancouver Island, British Columbia

At��, sleep in one of 25 well-appointed waterfront or rainforest tents set along a seven-mile-long deep-water��fjord. No roads lead here, so arrive via a 40-minute boat ride from nearby Tofino��(you can also get there by a��45-minute floatplane��ride from Vancouver, but it won’t fit the eco theme quite as well). Meals are served in a log cookhouse, yoga takes place daily in the studio or on its deck, and you can paddleboard or enjoy��guided hikes throughout the area’s estuary. If you feel inspired to give back,��join the hotel’s wildlife-habitat rehabilitation��efforts on the Clayoquot Sound��by signing up to��remove marine debris or replenish salmon-spawning environs. Since 2001, the resort, in concert with Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Ahousaht First Nation, has been working to repair environmental damage left from the mining and logging industries of the 1800s.��From $3,531 per person for a three-night package

Kasiiya Papagayo

Guanacaste, Costa Rica

There are just five tented suites built on timber platforms at��, which opened in January, and each comes with supreme privacy on the resort’s 123-acre waterfront property. This solar-powered wilderness retreat was built without cutting down any trees and by using natural, low-impact materials. An electric car delivers guests to nearby sights, tents come��stocked with drinks in a cooler instead of a fridge, and there’s an empty, white-sand beach steps from your deck. Surfing at Tamarindo is an hour away, or you can climb a tree, sea kayak to islands, or take a hike through the jungle right from your tent. Spot monkeys, crocodiles, and butterflies in the animal sanctuary at the nearby Diamante Eco ���ϳԹ��� Park.��From $490, including meals, activities, and airport transfer

The Blake Hotel

Taos, New Mexico

The upscale, slopeside�� opened at the base of Taos Ski Valley in 2017. This 80-room silver LEED-certified property is part of a revamp of the ski area’s base village, continuing��the��resort’s ongoing commitment to environmental practices. The hotel’s geothermal heating and cooling system and its water efficiency will contribute to Taos Ski Valley’s goal of reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020. (Taos Ski Valley is the first and only ski resort in the world to become a Certified B Corporation, a designation for businesses that exhibit high standards of social and environmental impact.)��As a guest, you’ll appreciate the spa’s skier-specific massage treatments, overnight ski storage with boot dryers, and après-ski cocktails at the hotel bar.��From $259

Oxford Hotel

Bend, Oregon

Borrow a free cruiser bike from the 59-room�� to explore downtown Bend, or park your Tesla out front in one of the electric-vehicle charging stations (electric cars also get free valet parking). This boutique property��has comfortable suites with views of the Cascade Mountains, loaner guitars for impromptu jam sessions, and organic breakfast delivered to your room. Powered entirely by renewable energy, the Oxford is equipped with low-energy heating and cooling systems, recycled materials in the design��build,��low-flow bathroom faucets, and all-natural mattresses.��From $409

High Lonesome Ranch

De Beque, Colorado

Less than an hour north of��Grand Junction,�� is a conservation-minded organization disguised as a guest ranch. Stay in private cabins, shared homes, or canvas tents along a tumbling creek on the ranch’s sprawling 250,000 acres. Miles of hiking and mountain-biking trails surround the property, and horseback riding and fly-fishing for brown and brook trout are a must. While it doesn’t have many��eco-lodge elements in its design, the��ranch works to protect and preserve biodiversity��through an on-site��research group��that studies everything from stream restoration and��migratory animals to��aspen-grove replenishing. It also has a team��dedicated to preserving and restoring degraded wildlife habitat��in an effort to promote mixed use of the land, from ranching and farming to recreation.��From $1,245 for two nights of double occupancy, meals and some activities included

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It doesn’t matter if you’re a longtime rider or a total newbie��at these��bike festivals,��the perks of being there are numerous—you can stock up on the latest gear (many festivals offer bike demos as part of the entry fee), learn critical skills,��join group rides, or grab a map and head out on your own. When you’re done riding, return��to the grounds for what��good festivals do best: music, food, and beer.

Sedona Mountain Bike Festival

Sedona, Arizona

Every March, the�� brings together thousands of singletrack fans for a laid-back gathering of riding, beer drinking, and gear testing. Its��three-day event pass grants access to demo fleets from more than 90 top mountain-bike brands, shuttled drop-offs to the area’s best trails, skills clinics, live music, food-truck fare, and craft beer. Riders get to traverse the scenic trail system within the Red Rock Ranger District of Coconino National Forest, and proceeds from the event go toward��its maintenance.�� (from $169), a 20-minute shuttle ride from next year’s��event location at Posse Grounds Park,��has nine A-frame chalets that sleep up to five��and five two-person studios, plus an outdoor pool and private entry��to trailheads like Bell Rock and Slim Shady.

Sea Otter Classic

Monterey, California

As one of the oldest and most well-attended festivals in the country, the annual , held on the Pacific��coast in April, is a sight to behold. Started in 1991, the four-day gathering has a massive gear expo with over a thousand brands, as well as stunt shows, kids’ programs, and road and mountain-bike races for elites and recreational riders, who show up in numbers nearing 10,000. The competitions��cover almost every discipline, from cross-country and downhill to dual slalom, plus noncompetitive races for all ages. Camp on-site (from $70) or rent an RV from nearby ��(from $150) for the full festival experience. In 2017, the event expanded to Europe, too, with the still growing taking place every May in Costa Brava, Spain.

Crankworx

Whistler, British Columbia

is the ten-day mountain-bike party that has taken over this resort town��every August since 2004. Watch as the pros battle it out in downhill or best-trick contests, sign up for a women’s or adaptive group ride, get the family involved through Kidsworx, or check out the accompanying photo and film competitions. The centrally located�� (from $225) has 192 modern��rooms and a valet bike service. The event has also gone global: you’ll now find Crankworx in New Zealand and Austria, too.

Pedalpalooza��

Portland, Oregon

,��the monthlong tradition that takes place every June,��is as much a worthy bike festival as it is a way to experience the true spirit of Portland. It's��wacky collection of free, volunteer-organized events and gatherings includes��galactic disco rides, a banh mi–powered bike tour of the city, and the notorious local version of World Naked Bike Ride, which sees upward��of 10,000 participants. In true Portland style, there are group rides for every sector of the community, from vegans and��remote workers to human-rights activists and bookstore enthusiasts. The recently opened�� (from $179) has 179 design-forward rooms, plus bikes and film cameras to rent from an on-site gear shed.

Virginia Trail Festival

Stokesville, Virginia

Held over Memorial Day weekend, the����takes place within the 200,000-acre Shenandoah National Park, which is an easy 90-minute��drive from Washington, D.C.��Organized by local bike-touring outfitter Shenandoah Mountain Touring, it’s a family-friendly campout at the����(from $50), where you’ll have access to up to 500 miles of purpose-built mountain-bike trails from your tent and group meals prepared by volunteer cooks. After your ride, take a plunge in the North River, which flows through the campground. At night, post up around the campfire or stargaze from the on-site observatory.

Alyeska Bike Festival

Girdwood, Alaska

More and more��ski resorts are realizing they need to attract summertime visitors—and what better way to do that than by throwing a killer bike festival? Alyeska Ski Resort, located an hour by car from Anchorage, hosts the����at the start of��September to mark the final weekend of its summertime��bike park. Participants can ride lift-accessed downhill mountain-bike trails, sign up for dirt-jump contests and enduro races, or enter more lighthearted events like a tractor pull or pond crossing. Stay at the 300-room, château-style�� (from $299) so you can hop on the aerial tram at��sunset and soak in the saltwater pool at the end of the day.

Rebecca’s Private Idaho��

Ketchum, Idaho

Join professional cyclist Rebecca Rusch in her hometown of Ketchum for��, a bike festival over Labor Day weekend that features gravel races of varying lengths, from 18 miles to a four-day stage race. The event raises funds for bike and trail-building organizations. To counter its growing popularity, Rusch limits��the number of registrants to around 1,000��in order��to keep the vibe more low-key. That said, the festival ends with a raucous beer-guzzling, gelande-quaffing��contest. Many of the group rides start from the�� (from $385), which has 93 rooms and��six suites, and Four Mountain Sports, an on-site��bike shop that offers��demos and rentals from the brands Giant and Norco.

Fruita Fat Tire Festival

Fruita, Colorado

The trail-heavy town of Fruita is a verified mountain-biker’s hub in Colorado. Many of those knobby-tire enthusiasts unite for one weekend in May every year for the fun-loving��. You can test out new bikes from the demo fleet, listen to live bluegrass from a central beer garden, and join skill camps and guided group rides through��wine country and��Colorado National Monument��and over Douglas Pass. The company�� has a number of vacation rentals, from downtown bungalows to a teardrop camper.

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Summer has flown by and Labor Day is right around the corner. For those of you who are as unprepared as I am, there are still opportunities to take that spontaneous trip—just opt for a short hop within your region. These adventures all still have availability and are mapped out by location to make it easy to book a last-minute getaway.

In the Midwest

The Ozarks, Missouri

From bass and fly fishing on Table Rock Lake to tram tours that take you through , a 10,000-acre reserve filled with bison, elk, and whitetail deer, it’s no surprise that (from $405) and its new 40-tent (from $214), in Missouri’s Ozark Mountains, was masterminded by Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris. It’d be easy to spend a long weekend at the 342-room resort, located an hour by car from Springfield, or 15 minutes from the smaller Branson airport, but that would mean missing out on the rich history of the surrounding towns. Be sure to stop by , 30 minutes by car from the lodge, for a taste of the area’s moonshine-making heydays, or drive an hour west to downtown Eureka Springs, in Arkansas, an offbeat creative hub filled with galleries, shops, and Victorian-era architecture. Closer to Branson, (from $200) is another iconic lakeside resort that’s geared towards families, with a marina that offers boat rentals, water skiing, parasailing, and scuba diving.

In the Mid-Atlantic

Fayetteville, West Virginia��

As whitewater rafting season winds down in the rest of the country, West Virginia’s Gauley River, a 35-mile stretch of Class V rapids, enters its primetime. Starting in early September for six weekends, the rapids attracts hardcore rafters to Lower Gauley, a technical section that includes a 30-foot plunge, while families and beginners can head to Upper New River, a laidback passage ideal for swimming and wildlife spotting. , a resort located on New River Gorge in the nearby town of Fayetteville, still has plenty of rafting availability over Labor Day weekend (and is offering half-off normal prices for Upper and Lower New River rafting trips; from $69.50), as well as campsites (from $15) and one- to four-bedroom cabins (from $129). The surrounding area offers a variety of other activities, like climbing and fishing, but for some prime mountain biking, drive three hours north, where the 10.5-mile in Blackwater Falls State Park, and the 22.4-mile , are fun singletracks.

In the Northeast

Acadia National Park, Maine

While East Coast city residents make an exodus to the standard rotation of weekend getaways (the Hamptons, Newport, Nantucket), head to Portland or one of Maine’s surrounding areas for a quieter and less scene-y alternative—and plenty of outdoor fun. After a day or two exploring Portland, make your way to , a coastal stretch of granite mountains, woodlands, and beaches on Mount Desert Island, a three-hour drive northwest from the city. Spend a morning hiking the , which ascends 1,000 feet by a series of ledges that offers sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean, before stopping by for a seafood lunch. In the afternoon, rent a bike from to test six miles of trails at The Camden Hills or rent a kayak from to explore the 60 islands that make up the Stonington Archipelago. Come sunset, post up at Sand Beach, a secluded stretch of white sand tucked in between mountains on the east side of Mount Desert Island, which you can access via Park Loop Road, the park’s scenic drive. While most of the park’s main campsites fill up in advance, the main town of Bar Harbor has plenty of inns and hotels that range in price, and (from $250), (from $139), and (from $279), still have availability.��

In the South

New Orleans, Louisiana

As the city gears up for its fall festival season, when events like and fill the streets with visitors, Labor Day weekend marks a less crowded and less expensive time to visit. With most of the area’s adventure offerings within an hour’s drive from the city, its worthwhile to post up in town. And luckily, the city no longer has a shortage of places to stay, with a number of design-forward (and affordable) boutique hotel openings this year, from the Marigny’s old-world-style (from $129), which comes with its own 1860s-era church, and the 67-room (from $389), from the guys behind Ace Hotels, to (from $200), which has 197 rooms in a series of warehouses on Magazine Street. In between your requisite eating and drinking, paddleboard Bayou St. John, a four-mile waterway that passes historic homes and a sprawling park (); bike the 31-mile , a trail converted from former rail yard tracks that goes from downtown Covington to Slidell; or kayak the swamps at .

In the Southwest

Santa Fe, New Mexico

If there’s a time of year to experience the full spirit of Santa Fe, it’s over Labor Day weekend, when the annual , a week-long celebration across town, takes place. The festival, which goes from August 31 to September 8 this year, includes parades, arts and crafts booths, mariachi bands, and culminates with the burning of Zozobra, or Old Man Gloom,��a towering marionette that represents the hardships of the past year. For those looking for some respite in between exploring the nearby national forests, parks, and monuments, book a��stay at ��(from $240), which just added a series of hot tubs��set at the edge of its cottonwood-shrouded pond. Or to stay closer to the festivities, opt for (from $280), a refurbished 86-room motor lodge that opened last fall.��

In the Northwest

Portland, Oregon

Visiting the city in early September gets you the best of both worlds: it’s the tailend of the busy summer season, when the skies are clear and flowers are in full bloom (it’s called the City of Roses for a reason), and some hotels drop their rates. For visitors who want to take in all the nearby adventure offerings, from hiking up to 80 miles of trails at Forest Park to fishing Clackamas River, without the hassle of buying or renting gear, a stay at the new 174-room (from $179) comes with full access to its Gear Shed, stocked with fishing poles, mountain bikes, and—in true Portland fashion—35mm and Leica cameras to document it all with.

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Colin O’Brady was fully aware of the flow. For years he’d felt it on long runs and grueling rides, but usually it was only after the trance had passed that he recognized he’d been in it at all. During those moments of extreme exertion, the pain disappeared and time became less of a river, more of an ocean. How wonderful it was now to be in it and aware of it, too. He could hold the sensation and study it like a piece of sea glass plucked from the sand.

For hours—or had it been days?—scenes from his life scrolled by to the rhythmic, scratchy hiss of his skis on ice. He was a kid at a swim meet, his mom holding an orange towel on the far side of the blocks. He was on one knee in Ecuador, asking his girlfriend to marry him. He was on his back in a grimy Thai clinic, a cat crawling around his purple, gooey legs, which he’d just burned to a crisp in a freak accident.

Kicking and gliding his way forward, mile after mile, he began repeating a phrase that gave him strength. Infinite love. Infinite love. Infinite love.��

A wooden post appeared on the horizon and he snapped to. It was the day after Christmas in 2018, and O’Brady, then 33, was in Antarctica. Staffers from the Antarctica Program at McMurdo Station, an American research outpost, had placed the post here to mark the edge of the continent, the boundary where the land below the snow and ice ended and the sea began. For 54 days, O’Brady had trudged alone, fighting whiteouts and howling wind. He’d hauled a sled of food and fuel some 566 miles and up 9,000 vertical feet to the South Pole, then veered hard to the west and made his way another 360 miles to this spot. He’d shed 25 pounds. Superglue caulked the deep, painful cracks in his fingers and hands. In Antarctica, skiing 20 miles is a Herculean day. In a deep flow state for much of the past 32 hours, O’Brady had covered nearly 80.

He touched the post, called his wife, and cried as the weight of what he’d done settled in. O’Brady could now claim one of the last great adventure firsts: a solo crossing of the Antarctic landmass, under his own power and with no resupplies. He collected himself and shuffled about a mile away to a spot where a plane could land. He was out of food but found a cache that had been left there a year earlier by Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions, or ALE, a Salt Lake City outfitter that operates flights and guided services into the interior of the continent. They would come for him in a few days. Inside the box he found some chocolate, freeze-dried meals, and a note: “Congratulations, Ben!”

Ben Saunders, a Briton and star polar adventurer, had attempted his own solo crossing of Antarctica in 2017 but had stopped at the South Pole after realizing he would starve before completing the route. The goody box had been waiting ever since.

O’Brady set up his tent and slept. Somewhere in the white enormity behind him, British Army captain Louis Rudd, 49, was steadily grinding toward the same wooden post. Rudd had been friends with Henry Worsley, a fellow army officer and distant relation of Frank Worsley, the captain of Ernest Shackleton’s doomed ship, the Endurance. In 2016, Worsley was just 30 miles short of completing an unsupported crossing under his own power, but he suffered an infection and had to be airlifted to Chile, where he died of organ failure at age 55. The following year, Rudd led a team on a traverse of the continent. Now he was back to do it again, alone, to honor his fallen friend. “It’s really important it’s a Brit that cracks this journey first,” he told the Telegraph shortly before leaving. Now a hippie from Oregon had beat him to it.��

O’Brady hadn’t seen Rudd since day six, when the captain had shuffled up beside him in a whiteout.

“Morning, mate,” Rudd said. “I’ve got a bit of a suggestion for you.”

O’Brady cut him off. “We both know the score out here,” he said. “I’m wishing you well, but let this be the last time we speak.”

Rudd removed his glasses and stared into the American’s cool blue eyes.

“OK,” Rudd said. “Suit yourself.”

What was Rudd going to say over the screaming wind? Was he trying to get in O’Brady’s head? Hoping to offer advice as a more experienced explorer? To this day, O’Brady doesn’t know. What’s certain is that both men were feeling the tension of their contest, as Will Ferrell once put it, all the way down to their plums.��

And yet their race across Antarctica wasn’t intentional—not initially, at least. When they started planning their expeditions, neither knew that the other was preparing to go. Rudd announced his bid in April 2018. O’Brady, wondering who else might be going for it, strategically waited another six months. He went public on October 18, just a few weeks before both men would be dropped on the ice.

“Lou was a little short with me when I reached out over e-mail,” O’Brady recalls. Rudd no longer wants to talk about it, but Wendy Searle, his expedition manager—who will be attempting a South Pole speed record in November—says that “Lou was never going to do anything but his own thing. It was all terribly British.”

The battle between an upstart Yank and a hardened Brit caused an international media storm. Here was a rivalry reminiscent of the classic 1911 race to the South Pole between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott—this time chronicled online. O’Brady and Rudd sat next to each other on the small plane that delivered them to their starting points, which were roughly a mile apart. They began their crossings almost at the same moment. O’Brady knew he couldn’t match the captain’s experience and that Rudd had a lighter sled, so he decided he had to go longer. If Rudd traveled for 12 hours, O’Brady would go for 13. By day 11, he’d built up a ten-mile lead.��

In the UK, reporters filed dispatches for the BBC, the Independent, and the Guardian. The New York Times published ten stories, including a study guide for young readers and a slick web page . O’Brady posted a almost every day.

All the hype had many veterans in the polar community raising their bushy eyebrows. As critics pointed out, O’Brady and Rudd were that crossed only the landmass of Antarctica and none of the ice that extends over the surrounding seas. They weren’t the first to do this. Both Ben Saunders and Henry Worsley had also followed shorter routes, though both included at least some of the ice shelves. O’Brady and Rudd, some argued, were looking for the easier way. “It’s a pretty simple equation: the longer the distance, the harder the trip,” says Eric Larsen, 48, who has led guided expeditions to the polar regions for two decades.

Larsen and others point to Norwegian Borge Ousland, who crossed Antarctica—and its ice sheets—alone and without resupply in 1997. That 1,768-mile sea-to-sea endeavor, which he completed in 65 days, was nearly twice as long as O’Brady’s. But because Ousland had at times used a small sail to scoot himself along when the wind was right, he left the door open for someone to claim a truly unaided trek.

As news of O’Brady’s victory made its way around the world, ExplorersWeb, an online hub for expedition news that “makes sure credit is given where credit is due,” pushed back and noted what many in the media had failed to mention—that for the last 300-plus miles of the crossing, O’Brady (and Rudd) the South Pole Overland Traverse. Used to ferry supplies between McMurdo Station and the pole, it’s routed around crevasses and sometimes graded and marked with flags. In 2013, a British woman named Maria Leijerstam had on a three-wheeled recumbent fat bike.

“Expeditions aren’t just about doing the best thing anymore,” Larsen laments. O’Brady largely ignored the criticisms, focusing instead on his messaging to a much wider, mainstream audience. He had barely changed out of the underwear he wore for the entire crossing when he flew to New York to meet with 20 publishers competing for the rights to his memoir, The Impossible First, which will be released in February 2020. He did the TV circuit and later got a hug from Julia Roberts in the NBC Universal greenroom before giving a speech to the broadcaster’s executive team. He filmed He talked music with Paul Simon. He started charging tens of thousands of dollars for keynote addresses. His message: we all have a reservoir of untapped potential within us, and only our own minds can prevent us from accessing it.��

Matt Sharkey, global sports marketing director at the North Face, says that putting this kind of spin on an extreme adventure triumph is the natural evolution of the 21st-century expedition narrative. The feat or record still matters, but it’s the backstory that people crave.

“Now we say to our athletes, Hey look, we don’t want to pressure you for the fastest known time,” Sharkey says. “But we want to know, what are you struggling with?”

On a rainy May��afternoon in Bend, Oregon, O’Brady is sitting comfortably in a windowless room at the Riverhouse on the Deschutes, a hotel and conference center. He’s wearing a tight T-shirt stretched across a model’s torso, dark jeans, and a borrowed Rolex. His dirty-blond hair is closely cropped.

Earlier in the day, during a break in the weather, O’Brady had been outside with Oregon governor Kate Brown, the two of them chatting about vipassana meditation while the governor’s staff filmed the moment for Brown’s social-media channels. Soon he’ll head downstairs to deliver a version of his well-practiced keynote address—he’s already delivered it some 30 times this year—to a couple of hundred attendees at an outdoor-recreation conference. Right now, though, O’Brady and Blake Brinker, 35, a former tech entrepreneur turned brand consultant with a Zach Galifianakis beard, are brainstorming approaches to his upcoming commencement address at Pace Academy, a private K-12 school in Atlanta. The bar is set high: Robert Downey Jr. gave the 2015 address after arriving by helicopter.

“From a storytelling perspective, the way I’d like to do this would be…” O’Brady trails off. Brinker jumps in, and they circle around a metaphor about O’Brady being on the ice, alone and afraid, with no traditional path to follow. “Yeah, yeah,” O’Brady says. “It feels a little bit like, What’s your Everest? Not what’s hers or your mom’s or what the school thinks or the guidance counselor, but what is your answer to that question?”

This idea—mustering the courage to set a big goal and then embracing the fear that comes with going for it—is nothing new on the motivational-speaker tour, but O’Brady has credibility that few can match. He was born on a commune in Olympia, Washington, to natural grocers Tim O’Connor and Eileen Brady, who bestowed a blended surname on both him and his elder sister, Caitlin. A dozen family friends were present for his home birth, which happened on a futon while Bob Marley played on repeat.

The family, poor but comfortable, moved to southeast Portland when O’Brady was nine months old, and early on it became clear that he possessed extraordinary athletic ability. He scored so many goals as a young soccer player that his coaches had to stress “the value of the assist,” according to his mom. He won his first state swimming championship at age eight. When he was in high school, Yale recruited him to swim breaststroke. “I was so clueless when they called with an offer,” he says. “I was like, Yale, where is that?” At one point, he was ranked fifth in the U.S. for his age group in the 200-yard breaststroke, not far behind Michael Phelps.��

In 2008, his life took a dramatic and horrific turn. A little over a year after graduating with a degree in economics, O’Brady was on a tour of Pacific surf breaks. He met up in Thailand with David Boyer, his best friend from childhood, so they could learn to scuba dive on the island of Ko Tao. One evening on the beach, a few local guys came out with a rope soaked in kerosene, lit it, and started twirling it to make a flaming jump rope, a strange but popular pastime at backpacker parties in Thailand.��

Boyer went first, the rope hissing in the tropical air as it circled above him. O’Brady jumped in but mistimed his leap and landed straddling the rope. Flaming kerosene splattered up over his torso and neck; the rope got tangled around his legs and burned them badly. O’Brady collapsed into the sand and freed himself, burning his right hand, then ran to the sea and dove in.

“Salt water on a wound like that is the most excruciating pain you can imagine,” he recalls. “I got out and looked down, and the skin on my legs was charred and peeling like a hot dog.”

O’Brady spent three months convalescing, first in a grimy rural clinic, then at a hospital on the more developed island of Ko Samui, where he endured eight surgeries as doctors cut away dead flesh and debrided the deep second-degree burns that had exposed nerves on a quarter of his body. They weren’t sure he would ever walk normally again, given how scar tissue contracts.

When O’Brady takes the stage during lunchtime at the Riverhouse, he tells his story masterfully. Pacing back and forth in front of a large screen and wearing a lapel mic, he lingers on the key moments that underlie his hero’s journey. When he describes his accident, the audience is visibly moved. A woman near the front puts her hand over her mouth. A man toward the back squints and looks away from the stage.

O’Brady tells the crowd that the mishap, and his dashed future as an athlete, sent him into depression. His mother, sitting by his hospital bed, told him to set a goal for himself:“Life’s not over, Colin. What do you want to do when you get out of here?”

“Life’s over, Mom.”

“Just visualize something.”

He saw himself completing a triathlon.

“That wasn’t something I’d ever done in my life, but I started training right then,” he tells the audience. A picture of him doing dumbbell presses while bandaged in a Thai hospital bed flashes on the screen. The crowd roars with laughter.��

Months after the accident, back in Portland, he took a step, then five, then ten. He got a job as a commodities trader in Illinois. A year and a half after the accident, he crossed the finish line of the Chicago Triathlon. Four hours later, he checked the amateur results. He’d won.

At this point, the story of Colin O’Brady takes off in a rocking montage. Imagine it set to any track on Graceland, one of his favorite albums. He quits his job and becomes a professional triathlete, backed by a benefactor who believes in him. He races in 31 events in 25 countries on six continents. He shares hotel rooms with other athletes in Australia and China. Over four years, he has seven top-ten finishes, placing fourth in Zimbabwe. Often he has the love of his life at his side. He’d met Jenna Besaw in Fiji a couple of months before the rope accident. She was 20, on spring break while studying abroad in Australia. They kept in touch during his recovery, and in 2010 she moved to Portland to live with him. In 2014, O’Brady proposed atop Ecuador’s third-highest peak, 18,996-foot Cayambe.��

A few days after the conference at the Riverhouse, I meet the couple in Jackson, Wyoming, where they plan to spend half their time. It’s cool and wet outside, the Tetons hidden in clouds. Besaw, who has long brown hair and an athletic build, opens the door of their modest red townhome, which sits on a quiet street near Snow King, the local ski area. They’re still moving in, and the couch just arrived. A small painting of O’Brady in Antarctica, a gift from a fan, hangs near the kitchen. Their goofy wheaten terrier, Jack, toddles over to have his haunches scratched.��

Every morning they take Jack for a steep hike up the ski slopes, and today I’m sweating profusely as I try to keep up. “Tell him what you’re training for,” O’Brady says to Jenna as we punch up blotches of late-spring snow. She hesitates. “It’s Everest,” O’Brady says.

Besaw studied international relations but is a naturally talented marketer with a sharp mind for business and communications. In 2012, when Eileen Brady ran an unsuccessful but spirited campaign to become Portland’s mayor—one of her TV ads, called “Put a Job on It,” —she asked Besaw to be a key member of her staff. In the early days of his triathlon career, O’Brady made Besaw his manager. She quickly realized that his athleticism wasn’t his only valuable asset. Looking around at races, she noticed that a number of competitors with little chance of reaching the podium had sponsors, usually because something about them appealed to a particular ­audience. O’Brady, she believed, was a figure who could speak to all kinds of people. “If you’re thinking about this as storytelling,” she says, “then obviously Colin has his incredible comeback.”

Around 2014, just as O’Brady was coming into his prime as a triathlete, the two got the itch to do something more meaningful than just “high-fiving each other at the finish line,” as Besaw puts it. O’Brady sensed that he had a massive reserve of power and wondered how he might tap into it to do something big and fulfilling. “I’d always been drawn to the mountains, so that’s where we looked,” he says.

By 2015, O’Brady was laying the groundwork to break the speed record for the Explorers Grand Slam, a challenge that entails climbing the highest peak on each continent and skiing the last degree to the North and South Poles. Their goal was to use the effort to inspire kids to be more active and pursue their dreams. With $10,000, O’Brady’s life savings, the couple built a website and launched a nonprofit called Beyond 7/2. Initially, they struggled to attract sponsors. Just a month before O’Brady was scheduled to begin, they had secured only half of the $500,000 the project required.��

“I kept thinking, We’re going to find a way,” he says. “And sure enough, we ended up in a conversation with Nike, and they were like, We love this.”

At the time, only two people had completed the Explorers Grand Slam in under a year, but O’Brady did it in 139 days, beating the previous record by 53 days. Along the way, he set a new record for the fastest time up the Seven Summits, 131 days, bagging both Everest and Denali in an eight-day stretch in May 2016. Following a suggestion from his cousin, he sent the first-ever Snapchat from the summit of Everest. It became one of the platform’s most popular posts of the year, with 22 million views. All told, the project racked up half a billion media impressions, while their nonprofit partners brought O’Brady’s go-bigger message to kids in 29,000 schools.��

O’Brady had proven his ability to reach an enormous audience. He and Besaw wondered, what else can we do?

At the top of Snow King, Besaw reminds O’Brady of the day’s schedule. He has an 11 A.M. call with Pace, the private school in Atlanta. The executives at a freight-logistics company want to talk about a keynote. He needs to work on his book.

Of all the appointments, O’Brady is most excited about speaking with Ross Bernkrant, a Florida man who won a 30-minute phone call with him at a fundraising auction. The guy beat Stage IV esophageal cancer, heard O’Brady on a podcast, and became inspired to take on his own Everest—hiking laps on a mountain in Vermont totaling 29,029 vertical feet. It took him about 24 hours.��

“Knowing what you know now, do you ever wish you hadn’t had cancer?” O’Brady asks him.

“No, man. I think I’m much happier now because of it, doing what I want to do.”

“I feel the same way about the fire,” O’Brady says, gazing at his scarred legs. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, but there’s something about coming out the other side, when you look back on it, the strength and perspective it gives you to take advantage of every day.”

After the Explorers Grand Slam, in June 2018, O’Brady climbed to the highest point in all 50 states in just 21 days, breaking the previous record by almost half. Along the way, he and Besaw sought to create what they called a “Forrest Gump effect” by inviting people to join him for portions of the climbs. (Roughly 1,000 people came out.) The project doubled as training for the Antarctica crossing. For months, O’Brady had been visiting a Portland coach and Navy officer named Mike McCastle, who once did 5,804 pull-ups in 24 hours while wearing a 30-pound weight vest. Under McCastle’s guidance, O’Brady worked to hone more than just his muscles. He submerged his hands in ice baths and then untied knots and solved Lego puzzles. On his own initiative, he went on ten-day silent-meditation retreats.��

He also set about refining his diet—a crucial aspect of an extended polar expedition—with help from one of his sponsors, a Wisconsin supplement company called Standard Process. O’Brady figured he’d burn at least 10,000 calories a day on the ice, which meant he’d have to pull a lot of weight just to keep from starving. “The primary thing that goes into the sled is food and fuel,” says Besaw. Add food and you can last longer, but you’ll move slower, and the window to complete an Antarctic expedition is less than 90 days. “The margins are extremely tight,” she says.

Before O’Brady had begun his high-points project, the medical staff at Standard Process put him through a battery of tests that revealed a nutrient deficiency and disfunctional digestive system, plus, on the positive side, a resiliency gene that allowed him to recover rapidly from extreme exertion. They put him on a supplement regimen that included, among other things, probiotics, protein powder, and ashwaganda. Still, after O’Brady finished all his climbs he felt desperately fatigued, and new tests showed him to be in an even worse state.

“We had to sit him down for a very serious conversation,” says John Troup, a vice president for clinical innovation at Standard Process. “With too much inflammation, the underlying systems of the body can become dysfunctional. This is why we believe Worsley died.”

Just weeks later, however, O’Brady cast off on another adventure, a 400-mile trek across Greenland. This time, though, he incorporated oranges into his nutrition, and a slower pace afforded him daily recovery time. Blood work confirmed a major improvement. Standard Process eventually sent him slabs of custom-made “Colin bars,” a 4,500-calorie plant-based gut bomb that’s 70 percent fat and palatable enough to eat all day every day for nearly two months in Antarctica. (At the end of the crossing, doctors examining him were amazed he’d lost only 25 pounds.)��

On my last night in Jackson, we go to a brewery to watch O’Brady’s beloved Portland Trail Blazers lose the NBA Western Conference finals. Afterward he runs through some of the highs and lows of the effort. Bluebird days with no wind that felt like a gift. Storms that left him weeping in his tent. In his greatest moments of doubt, he’d hold his arms up like a champ and channel the love and support of millions of people rooting for him. “I’m sure I looked like a fool,” he says.��

As for what’s next, he won’t say, but one assumes it will involve supreme athleticism and human connection. “I love the accolades and being out there, but that’s not what endures,” he tells me. “When you strip it all away, it’s the fabric of the experience that stands out.”

A few days later I reach out to Rudd, who is busy planning an adventure that he wants to remain secret for now. I ask him what he was going to suggest to O’Brady that day on the ice. He tells me, and I debate whether to share it with O’Brady. In the end, I keep it to myself. Some stories are better that way.

Correspondent Tim Neville () wrote about ­China’s ski-resort industry in January/February 2018.

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